Letter regarding supporting the community after East Cambridge fire

The following email was sent yesterday to the MIT community by Provost Martin A. Schmidt, Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart, and Executive Vice President and Treasurer Israel Ruiz.

To the members of the MIT community,

We are writing to let you know how you can support our local community in the wake of a devastating fire.

You have likely heard news of yesterday's ten-alarm fire in Cambridge which required assistance from 140 firefighters from nearly 20 communities. The fire occurred on Berkshire and York Streets in East Cambridge where eight buildings were damaged, some catastrophically. Miraculously, only minor injuries have been reported. At least 60 people have been displaced and the American Red Cross and the City of Cambridge have set up shelters to provide warmth and food. Some MIT graduate students who lived in apartments in that area were also displaced, or unable to return to the area, and MIT has offered them temporary alternative housing.

Our hearts go out to our Cambridge neighbors, and members of our own community, who are experiencing this tragedy. And of course, our first thoughts are about how we can help. We want to let you know that Cambridge Mayor E. Denise Simmons has set up a gofundme site to collect donations for the impacted families and individuals. If you are wondering how you can support those displaced by the fire, this is an immediate way to provide needed assistance.

You can also send contributions directly to:

Mayor's Fire Relief Fund
795 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139

MIT will be making an institutional donation to the Mayor's Fire Relief Fund and will also be following up with the City to see what other assistance might be helpful in the weeks and months ahead.

Our thoughts are with all those who have been impacted by this tragic event.

Martin A. Schmidt
Provost

Cynthia Barnhart
Chancellor

Israel Ruiz
Executive Vice President and Treasurer

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Letter to the community reaffirming MIT's support for students

The following email was sent Thursday to the MIT community from Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart.

To the members of the MIT community,
 
In President Reif's message of November 9, he reminded us that, “Whatever may change in Washington ... it will not change the values and mission that unite us.” I write today to update you on our work to fulfill this pledge, and the steps we are taking to protect the safety and wellbeing of our students.
 
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
 
The election has created uncertainty about the future of DACA and, as a result, understandable concern for our undocumented students. We have met with these students to understand and respond to their needs, and we will continue to do so.
 
I say to you what we have said to them in person: MIT's commitment to our undocumented students will not change. We will do everything we can that is legally permissible to continue to enroll undocumented students and ensure they have the same student life and learning experience as documented students.
 
In addition to meeting undocumented students' immediate and long term needs, MIT has reaffirmed its unequivocal support for the continuation and expansion of DACA. Last week, President Reif joined over 400 other university and college presidents from across the nation in signing an open letter citing the “moral imperative” and “national necessity” of the program.
 
Federal immigration law enforcement
 
In the days since the election, questions have arisen about MIT's role in enforcing federal immigration laws. Like the City of Cambridge, MIT Police have a longstanding practice of not inquiring about individual's immigration status, and our officers do not enforce federal immigration laws.
 
Moreover, MIT does not voluntarily share information about the immigration status of our undocumented students, and law enforcement officials seeking to enter our community are expected to alert MIT Police first.
 
To prepare for possible changes to current federal law and agency practices, Vice President and General Counsel Mark DiVincenzo has been working with his team and outside legal experts to better understand these complex issues. His office has created a helpful Frequently Asked Questions document with more information about DACA, federal immigration rules, and how to obtain legal advice. This document will be updated regularly to account for new developments or requests for information.
 
Establishing a working group
 
I am in the process of establishing a working group of faculty, students, and staff that will be responsible for helping to address potential changes to federal policy and law that limit student access to MIT or ability to thrive here. I am pleased Associate Professor of History and Secretary of the Faculty Christopher Capozzola has agreed to chair this group.  
 
We are working to finalize the group's membership and charge before the end of the semester. I believe it will enable us to respond nimbly to new federal rules or laws in a manner consistent with MIT's core values and mission.
 
Caring for ourselves and others
 
The free exchange of ideas and beliefs is the lifeblood of academic institutions — something that we all have a responsibility to vigorously defend. MIT's commitment to protecting and encouraging freedom of speech, regardless of policy preferences or political viewpoints, must remain steadfast.
 
Sadly, national reports of intolerance, harassment, discrimination, and violence are on the rise. To protect every MIT community members' rights, safety, and wellbeing, we have longstanding policies against bias, harassment, and discrimination, and processes in place to report violations of these policies. Human Resources, the Division of Student Life, the Offices of the Dean for Graduate and Undergraduate Education, the Ombuds Office, and the MIT Police are among the offices available to assist any community member who is subject to a bias-related incident.
 
The Division of Student Life, Title IX Office, and other departments are currently reviewing existing reporting processes to ensure they are easy to access, coordinated, and responsive to community members' needs.
 
In addition to being in the midst of an uncertain, anxious political climate, we are entering the most stressful time of the term. As a result, we all must be mindful of our own health and wellness. MindHandHeart has compiled a list of December community events related to wellness, mental health, stress relief, and post-election dialogue.
 
Students have told me time and again how much they appreciate faculty members who acknowledge and discuss issues that impact students' academic and personal wellbeing. The Office of Student Support and Wellbeing has compiled these outreach tips that faculty, as well as staff and peer mentors, may find useful in the days and weeks ahead.
 
As we focus on the better world we are committed to creating, I know we will find strength in our community's big, bold ideas — and our even bigger and bolder hearts.
 
Sincerely,
 
Cynthia Barnhart
Chancellor
 
 

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Face to face with "The Enemy"

When the filmmaking pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière screened their 1895 film, "The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat," audiences were so frightened by the real appearance of the image that they screamed and got out of the way — or so a well-known anecdote goes. Today, as one enters a virtual reality (VR) space — such as that conjured by MIT Visiting Artist Karim Ben Khelifa in his vanguard project "The Enemy" — it is not uncommon for participants to experience a similar shock at the sounds of footsteps, then sudden presence of two soldiers in the room. Like that early film audience, our response to "The Enemy" has something to do with the novel technology, and everything to do with human nature.

"The Enemy" introduces participants to combatants from opposing sides in contemporary conflicts, including soldiers from Israel and Palestine and soldiers from the Congo and opposing gangs members from El Salvador. This VR project is rooted in Ben Khelifa’s experiences as a conflict photographer, working extensively in the Middle East over the last 18 years, covering insurgent sides in the Iraq and Afghan wars. Together with Professor Fox Harrell, an MIT faculty member joint in both the Comparative Media Studies/Writing Program and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), they are combining interviews and photography with the latest research in artificial intelligence (AI) and digital media arts in order to explore VR’s potential not only to engender empathy, but also to make us more self-aware. Ultimately, they hope that understanding yourself and humanizing your enemy may thwart recruitment efforts and help end fighting.

The prototype of "The Enemy," which has been tested at MIT on multiple occasions, begins with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before moving on to the next conflict in East Congo. The experience begins in a neutral space where photographs of our protagonists, Gilad and Abu Khaled, adorn the walls. The space feels familiar, so we know how to behave without instructions, and more importantly, so we feel comfortable. We are not in a combat zone, but in a peaceful space conducive to personal reflection. As we look at the images and listen to each man’s life story being told to us by the author a door slams. Two uniformed men enter and stand on opposite sides of the room; one is tall with dark hair and five o’clock shadow, the other, a slight man in a black hood revealing only his eyes. We can walk up to each soldier; his body language tells us whether we make him nervous or relaxed. Gilad and Abu Khaled react to us, as we do to them. We listen as each shares, in his mother tongue, his reasons for fighting, his ideas about his enemy, and his fears, hopes and dreams. Their responses (which are translated to English for us via voiceover) are strikingly similar.

“When we started the project,” says Ben Khelifa, “it was clear for me that this would not be a sitting experience. My instincts told me it would be more powerful if you walk the space. The conflict in Israel and Palestine is highly charged, and everyone has an opinion about it.” Regardless of your personal views, he notes, the project forces you “to face a stereotype in one form or another. And the fact that you’re getting physically closer to that stereotype, to listen to him, is something that opens up the story in a very different way.”

Ben Khelifa’s shift from conflict photography to VR came about gradually. First, there was a mounting frustration with the limitations of photojournalism and the publishing process. He explains, “When you go to war on the front lines, or when you share the plight of civilians as they go about the worst time of their lives, and they are welcoming you as a journalist, there is an unspoken contract. You’re here, you’re a journalist, and you’re going to make a difference — a difference that we can actually see at some point. And that is why they are actually letting us work on the ground, because they hope, and they really believe, we can bring change. ... I couldn’t see that change happening. When I’m in Baghdad or Kabul or other places and I work for a magazine, I send them over 50 photos per week around a story. They’ll run one, two, three, maybe four photographs.”

His search for a more effective way to document the lives of the fighters led to a multimedia project, called "Portrait of the Enemies," in which portrait photographs of soldiers were placed on opposite walls in a gallery and accompanied by audio recordings of their answers to six poignant questions. This project became the basis for "The Enemy." Being exposed to VR as a resident in the MIT Open Documentary Lab, Ben Khelifa decided this technology was perfectly suited to these soldiers’ narratives. He first donned a VR headset for a virtual mountain climbing experience and had an epiphany: “I was on the side of a mountain and I had vertigo even though I was sitting at MIT. I really understood that this medium was tricking my mind.” He thought, “What would happen to my storytelling if I add that layer of understanding?”

“We make sense of the world through stories, and we remember the world through experience. That’s how it works as human beings. I am telling a story and making people live an experience at the same time. I think the combination of the two might stick with you longer,” he adds. This concern for triggering critical awareness and self-reflection is what sets "The Enemy" apart from a lot of other VR projects, and incidentally, what led him to collaborate with Harrell, founder and director of the Imagination, Computation and Expression Laboratory (ICE Lab) at MIT.

Harrell had been researching how one’s identity can shift through gaming experiences and other types of interactive experiences. He explains how his ideas and ethos overlap with Ben Khelifa’s: “How do you model, let’s say, discrimination and bias? And here [Karim] is modeling dialogues on one of the grandest scales of discrimination and bias, which is a global conflict. And so we thought, can we use some of the models from these systems Ive been developing to implement change within a VR system? So as you go through the system, by the end, who you are is somebody different. If you’re nervous within it, that’s a certain affective identity. If you’re biased within it because you spend more time talking to somebody on one side than the other, that’s a part of your identity. And the VR experience can change and take all this into account as you progress in order to transform the space you are in and potentially your VR avatar itself.”

Harrell frequently asserts that “'The Enemy' is not oriented around spectacle; rather, it uses VR to create intimacy and journalistic naturalism.” He points out: “Really, it is about the fidelity of the body language and the spatial engagement with people that are usually very far apart.” Recognizing these synergies in their work, he says, “it just became natural that we began collaborating.”

Now, they have been working together for nearly two years and will continue their collaboration with the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) in 2016-17. Ben Khelifa and Harrell will be working on the project’s scalability, using augmented reality (AR) to ensure the widest possible distribution. They want to bring "The Enemy" to places where, for political or logistic reasons, the full-scale installation cannot be exhibited. After all, the goal of the project is not only to share the stories of men like Gilad and Abu Khaled. It is also to make us examine our biases, in hopes that after we remove the VR headset, we will see reality differently.

"The Enemy" is a co-production of Camera Lucida Production, francetv Nouvelles écritures, the National Film Board of Canada, Dpt., and Emissive.

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Four MIT students named Schwarzman Scholars

Three undergraduate and one graduate student from MIT have been selected as Schwarzman Scholars. They are among the 129 members of the program’s class of 2018, who will pursue a year of study and leadership training at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

MIT’s four students, Alix de Monts ’14, Lisa Ho, Anita Liu, and Melody Liu, will study public policy, economics and business, and international studies, and spend a year immersed in an international community of thinkers, innovators, and senior leaders in business, politics, and society. Expenses for each scholar are fully funded by the program, which is housed at Tsinghua University.

Alix de Monts is currently a master’s student in MIT’s Technology and Policy Program and earned a bachelor’s degree from the Institute in mechanical engineering. She is passionate about addressing the pressing geopolitical and technical challenges of the energy sector, and has had a wide range of international leadership experiences. She has raced the MIT solar car across Australia, been part of the Gordon Engineering Leadership Program, and interned with ExxonMobil in Houston and ENGIE in Paris. Her research, developing techno-economic models of the electricity grid to advise governments on policy decisions and market design, has brought her to Saudi Arabia and China. Moreover, she was the content director of the 2016 MIT Energy Conference. As a Schwarzman Scholar, she hopes to build partnerships and policies for driving global energy transitions.

Lisa Ho is a senior in computer science and mathematical economics. She plans to develop an international network of researchers dedicated to improving education, using economics and machine learning together to devise intelligent policy. She taught students in Oklahoma City and Boston, ran MIT’s Educational Studies Program (which annually teaches more than 3,000 students), developed engineering education software for Google, and examined principal management practices as a researcher for Harvard’s Department of Economics.

Anita Liu is majoring in computer science and engineering and in brain and cognitive sciences, with a minor in political science. She dreams of a world in which children are cared for and guided to achieve their full potential. She has participated in multiple policy internships on child care issues, and she is the executive director of a nonprofit dedicated to dual athletic-academic mentorship for underresourced Boston high school students. Through Schwarzman Scholars, she hopes to develop both leadership skills and a refined understanding of policy.

Melody Liu is a senior in mechanical engineering. Her vision is to innovate in the space of manufacturing robotics within industry, working with international companies. Throughout her undergraduate career, she has conducted research in robotics, developing a gel robotic fingertip and building an instrumentation robot for people with prosthetics. She has been an active tinkerer, building her own electric scooter and setting up a makerspace for her dormitory. For Liu, Schwarzman Scholars is an opportunity to build connections with Chinese businesses and to enhance her leadership and business skills, in order to lead a research division.

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Lincoln Laboratory is honored with the Herschel Award

At the recent 2016 Military Sensing Symposia (MSS) Detectors and Materials Conference, MIT Lincoln Laboratory was presented with the Herschel Award for its development of digital-pixel readout integrated circuits. The Herschel Award, given by the MSS Specialty Group on Detectors and Materials, recognizes a major breakthrough in infrared device science or technology.

Digital-pixel readout integrated circuits can achieve very high dynamic range, high sensitivity, and fast data rate compared to conventional technology. The MIT Lincoln Laboratory team received the award for its work on the Vital Infrared Sensor Technology Acceleration (VISTA) program. The VISTA program was a tri-service program managed by the U.S. Army's Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate; it was stood up to improve the nation's capability in advanced infrared focal plane array technology for military sensors. 

The Herschel Award, named for Sir William Herschel, a British astronomer who is credited with discovering infrared radiation, is one of the most prestigious awards offered by the MSS. It is not bestowed annually but is given when the selection committee, composed of leading members of the infrared scientific community, determines an individual or organization has contributed a significant advancement to the infrared science and industry community. Until this year, the Herschel Award had not been presented since 2011.

"This award is the result of the hard work of many engineers over nearly 15 years. It is because of the dedication and hard work of some of the most exceptionally talented engineers that we have been able to bring the digital-pixel dream to a reality," said Michael Kelly, associate leader of Lincoln Laboratory's Advanced Imager Technology Group and a principal investigator on the development team. "We have been very fortunate to have received strong support from a number of U.S. government sponsors. In particular, the VISTA program ‎provided our team with the platform and funding needed to rapidly mature the technology and make the advances for which we have been recognized with this award," he added. 

The MSS is a set of conferences on military sensing technologies. These conferences, managed by specialty groups, address a broad range of sensing domains, including detectors and materials, radar, infrared countermeasures, passive and active electro-optical sensors, missile defense sensors, and more. The MSS runs a fellowship program to recognize individuals whose body of technical work contributed significantly to military sensing and an awards program to recognize individuals and organizations who have made important breakthroughs in sensing technologies.

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Li-Huei Tsai receives Society for Neuroscience Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award

Li-Huei Tsai, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, lead investigator of the Aging Brain Initiative at MIT, associate director of the Glenn Labs for Aging Research at MIT, and a Broad Institute senior associate member was named the recipient of the Society for Neuroscience Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award. This Mika Salpeter Lifetime Award recognizes an individual neuroscientist with distinguished achievements in neuroscience that actively promotes the advancement of women in neuroscience.

Tsai’s laboratory studies the brain from the genes to higher order cognition such as learning and memory as well as brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. Tsai’s career began with her studies on a protein called cyclin-dependent kinase 5 or Cdk5, which has been found to affect neurodegenerative diseases. She has also studied the cellular machinery that controls the activation and inhibition of genes, also known as epigenetics. In addition, her work on integrating molecular, physiological, and circuit based experimental approaches has provided great insight into the processes of learning and memory. Currently, Tsai’s lab is working to create non-invasive treatments for mice with Alzheimer’s disease.

“Li-Huei Tsai is an extraordinary scientist who has made far reaching and innovative discoveries,” says Michael Sipser, professor of mathematics and dean of the MIT School of Science. “She was the first to demonstrate the importance of epigenetic gene regulation in Alzheimer’s disease. Her lab identified epigenetic modifying enzymes that regulate genes underlying memory formation and further demonstrated the importance of epigenetic modification in Alzheimer’s patients and in mice with Alzheimer’s disease. She has provided important evidence that Cdk5 is an important mediator of deficits found in Alzheimer’s disease mouse models. Aside from her major contributions to a better understanding of Alzheimer’s disease, her pioneering work provides several exciting new targets for therapeutic intervention of Alzheimer’s disease.”

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Community forum gives insight into how The Engine will run

At a community forum on MIT’s new startup accelerator, The Engine, administrators discussed the new enterprise and fielded questions about its formation, components, mission, funding, mentor and equipment access, startup-selection process, and other issues.

The forum, held last night in Building 32, opened with remarks from MIT’s leadership who helped launch The Engine: MIT President L. Rafael Reif, professor and head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Anantha Chandrakasan, Provost Martin Schmidt, and Executive Vice President and Treasurer Israel Ruiz.

The floor then opened up to professors, students, alumni, and other MIT community members, who posed questions about The Engine’s selection process and components, and offered advice and potential opportunities for collaboration.

Announced in October, The Engine is a new venture aimed at supporting entrepreneurs pursuing transformative technologies that are capital- and time-intensive. The venture aims to provide those entrepreneurs hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, and make available hundreds of thousands of square feet of space in Kendall Square and nearby communities. A web-based app, called the Engine Room, will allow entrepreneurs to use or rent specialized resources from MIT, and participating companies and institutions, including office and conference spaces on and off campus, clean rooms, and other facilities and specialized equipment. The venture will also introduce entrepreneurs to peers, mentors, and established companies in innovation clusters across the region and around the world.

Within a day following the announcement, The Engine’s website received about a thousand inquiries from those wanting to become involved. In February, The Engine will host a forum for startups that have submitted or plan to submit applications to discuss the program and selection process in more detail. In the spring, The Engine program will formally be kicked off and the first startups will enter the accelerator.

Making The Engine

In his opening remarks, President Reif laid out key reasons why MIT launched The Engine. One is to provide “patient” capital to entrepreneurs developing transformative technologies, who sometimes have difficulty finding funding; another is to help keep startups in the region. A third reason, he added, is to set successful examples for aspiring entrepreneurs in developing transformative technologies.

“Many students at MIT that are interested in [pursuing] these ideas in science-based innovation see that ideas like theirs don’t make it through, because there’s no patient capital,” he said. “We’d like those ideas to have a path for success to the marketplace to inspire others that want to do something similar.”

Ruiz recalled the term “innovation orchard” from President Reif’s May 2015 op-ed in The Washington Post. The piece discussed how supporters of innovation from the public, for-profit, and nonprofit sectors could form coalitions to provide physical space, mentorship, and bridge funding to transformative startups, to support their transition from idea to investment.  

In creating MIT’s “innovation orchard,” Ruiz said, the Institute considered several realities: transformative-technology startups at MIT didn’t have a lot of early-stage resources; venture capital funding was focusing increasingly on shorter timeframes, higher valuations, and higher expectations on returns; and most MIT and local entrepreneurs had to head to the West Coast for find support. “We wanted to think about how we could … say, ‘Yes, there are the same opportunities here at MIT,’” Ruiz said, referencing the final point.        

Chandrakasan introduced the Engine Room app and discussed how The Engine will work collaboratively with MIT’s existing innovation programs to address issues with funding, scaling up, equipment usage, forming founding teams, and other matters.

In selecting startups, Chandrakasan added, The Engine’s evaluation committee will consist of experts from outside MIT to avoid any conflicts of interest. “It’s also worth pointing out that funding for this, the investors, will be those who are committed to patient capital and/or seeing regional growth,” he said.

Schmidt introduced several ad hoc working groups formed for The Engine, “which are going to be structured to look at some of the key pieces that are critical to the success of people from our campus community exercising and using The Engine and the Engine Room.”

The committees are: the Engine Advisory Committee, led by Chandrakasan and populated by the leaders of each other group; the Facilities Access Working Group, led by Martin Culpepper, a professor of mechanical engineering and the “maker czar” in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering; the Technology Licensing Working Group, led by Tim Swager, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry; the Conflict of Interest Working Group, led by Klavs Jensen, a professor of chemical engineering; the Visas for Entrepreneurs Working Group, led by Dick Yue, the Philip J. Solondz Professor of Engineering; and MIT’s Innovation Ecosystem Working Group, led by MIT Innovation Initiative co-directors Fiona Murray, who is the William Porter (1967) Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan School of Management, and Vladimir Bulovic, the Fariborz Maseeh (1990) Professor of Emerging Technology.

Addressing community needs

After remarks, Ruiz and Chandrakasan fielded questions from more than a dozen MIT community members, including entrepreneurs, students, professors, and representatives of organizations and startup incubators in the region.

Answers to many questions shed light on The Engine’s components and selection process. For example, digital resources, such as CAD and other software for hardware design, will most likely be offered through the equipment-sharing program; there are no current restrictions on the types of startups accepted into the accelerator; The Engine plans to begin talks about potential collaborations with local incubators, such as Greentown Labs; and coordinated events will connect engineering students with MIT Sloan students, other entrepreneurs, and mentors.

One commenter asked if The Engine would support clinical trials for medical-device startups, a key startup category along with biotechnology, robotics, manufacturing, and energy. Ruiz noted MIT has strong existing partnerships with Boston hospitals, which could help startups transition more easily into clinical trials. But, he added, the venture only aims to carry startups through early stages. “At some point, The Engine will not carry you through clinical trials, but we will facilitate early on [resources for] the development, which is the most crucial aspect,” Ruiz said.

An alumna from the MIT Media Lab who founded an education-hardware startup asked if there was a place in The Engine for startups that may not turn much profit, even in the long-run. Noting that the question is very important, Ruiz said, “There’s one word that drives MIT and that we want to translate into The Engine: ‘impact.’ The Engine would indeed be interested in, say, low-cost diagnostic technologies for developing countries, that don’t generate much profit. Certainly, we’re interested in social entrepreneurs with the opportunity to create a much wider impact.”

A few commenters offered advice and opportunities for collaboration with The Engine. MIT Sloan alumnus Peter Rothstein, now president of the Northeast Clean Energy Council, which works with startup incubators across the region, said his organization could discuss collaborating with The Engine on shared equipment, mentorship, and other resources. His recommendation for administrators was to form committees designated for facilitating partnerships with investors, industry, customers, and other incubators.

“Great ideas,” Chandrakasan replied. “That’s exactly the type of things we’re thinking about.”

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